This invention relates to apparatus and method for noncontact optical measurement of the angular position of a shaft or like element supported to rotate about a predetermined axis. Various types of mechanism are known for this general purpose, but they have limitations due to concentricity and resolution requirements, complexity, expense, or reliability.
Typical of prior art devices are drums or discs affixed to the shaft in question and carrying magnetic or optical "marks" which define some increment of shaft angle. Higher resolution requires a larger number of marks, and as this number increases it becomes necessary to either increase the radius of the drum or disc to maintain a readable separation of the marks, or to make the marks smaller and the construction of the optical or magnetic readouts more precise. Some devices use a single circle of such marks together with some index or "0 angle" indicator; the detecting mechanism simply counts the number of marks as the shaft rotates from zero position to determine the shaft angle. An interruption of device power may cause the counting system to lose track of the total count, or angle. An absolute angle indication can be obtained if each mark is replaced by a unique code word. However, the size of such code words determines the resolution, and the larger the word, the more constraints are placed upon construction tolerances, leading to more complexity, closer tolerances, and more expensive devices.
An optical rotor rotation sensing system for reading out power consumption values from a watthour meter is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,327,362 issued Apr. 27, 1982 to Robert J. Hoss. This system provides the rotor of the meter with a surface which is light reflective over 180.degree. and light absorbtive over the remainder. Light from an LED driven from an AC signal is directed to this surface of the rotor through an optical fibre cable and reflected light is transmitted through another optical fibre cable to a photodetector. The resultant pulses are counted and stored in the counter for later transmission to a remote monitoring site.
An angle-position transducer system of a direct reading analog-to-digital type is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,320,293 issued Mar. 16, 1982 to Harold Guretzky. There a source of light which provides a thin "line" of light, preferably from a laser source, is directed transversely to a transparent angle-shaped opening arranged around the surface of a drum carried on the shaft being monitored. A photodetector mounted on the opposite side of the drum from the light source receives a variable amount of light according to the shaft rotation, and the resulting variable voltage signal is converted to a digital signal which is used to drive a digital indicator.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,918,814 issued Nov. 11, 1975 to Sidney Weiser, discloses an optical position sensor in which a beam of light is collimated and directed by an optical fibre cable through the center of a four quadrant photodetector (quad detector), through a lens and onto a target having a regular target area of uniform reflectivity. Reflected light returns though the lens to the quad detector, and the resultant output voltage from each quadrant bears a direct relationship to the displacement of the target image along either the x or y axis, while z axis measurements can be achieved with a more complex detector and circuit. However there is no provision for determining displacement in rotation, and the required uniform reflectivity of the target area will preclude such a measurement.